That depends on whether they decided to commit suicide while in a normal-for-them frame of mind, not on their current preference. The first part of the question implies that they didn’t, in which case the correct response is to rescue them, wait for them to get sober, and talk it out—and then they can commit suicide, if they still feel the need.
Very well, then. Next example. Your friend is depressed, and they want to commit suicide. You know that their real problem is a neurotransmitter imbalance that can be easily fixed. However, that same neurotransmitter imbalance is depriving them of any will to fix it, and in fact they refuse to cooperate. You know that if you fix their imbalance regardless, they will be happy, they will live a fulfilled life, and they will be grateful to you for it. Is it friendly to intervene and fix the imbalance, or is it friendly to let them die, seeing as depression and thoughts of suicide are a normal-for-them frame of mind?
This is an excellent answer, and squares well with mine: If they merely want to commit suicide, they may not have considered all the alternatives. If they have considered all the achievable alternatives, and their preference is to commit suicide, I’d support them doing so.
If this is leading in a direction where “wireheading” is identified with “being happy and living a fulfilled life”, then we might as well head it off at the pass.
Being happy—being in a pleasurable state—isn’t enough, we would insist that our future lives should also be meaningful (which I would argue is part of “fulfilled”).
This isn’t merely a subjective attribute, as is “happy” which could be satisfied by permanently blissing out. It has objective consequences; you can tell “meaningful” from the outside. Meaningful arrangements of matter are improbable but lawful, structured but hard to predict, and so on.
“Being totally happy all the time” is a state of mind, the full description of which would compress very well, just as the description of zillions of molecules of gas can be compressed to a handful of parameters. “Meaningful” corresponds to states of mind with more structure and order.
If we are to be somehow “fixed” we would want the “fix” to preserve or restore the property we have now, of being the type of creature who can (and in fact do) choose for themselves.
The preference for “objective meaningfulness”—for states which do not compress very well—seems to me a fairly arbitrary (meaningless) preference. I don’t think it’s much different from paperclip maximization.
Who is to observe the “meaningful” states, if everyone is in a state where they are happy?
I am not even convinced that “happy and fulfilled” compresses easily. But if it did, what is the issue? Everyone will be so happy as to not mind the absence of complicated states.
I would go so far as to say that seeking complicated states is something we do right now because it is the most engaging substitute we have for being happy.
And not everyone does this. Most people prefer to empty their minds instead. It may even be that seeking complexity is a type of neurotic tendency.
Should the FAI be designed with a neurotic tendency?
I can give you my general class of answers to this kind of problem: I will always attempt to the best of my ability to talk someone I care about out of doing something that will cause them to irretrievably cease to function as a person—a category which includes both suicide and wireheading. However, if in spite of my best persuasive efforts—which are likely to have a significant effect, if I’m actually friends with the person—they still want to go through with such a thing, I will support them in doing so.
The specific implementation of the first part in this case would be to try to talk them into trying the meds, with the (accurate) promise that I would be willing to help them suicide if they still wanted to do that after a certain number of months (dependent on how long the meds take to work).
There are so many different anti-depressants and the methods for choosing which ones are optimal basically come down to the intuition of the psychiatrist. It can take years to iterate through all the possible combinations of psychiatric medication if they keep failing to fix the neurotransmitter imbalance. I think anything short of 2 years is not long enough to conclude that a person’s brain is irreparably broken. It’s also a field that has a good chance of rapid development, such that a brain that seems irreparably broken today will certainly not always be unfixable.
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I explored a business in psychiatric genetic testing, and identified about 20 different mutations that could help psychiatrists make treatment decisions, but it was infeasible to bring to market right now without having millions of dollars for research, and the business case is not strong enough for me to raise millions of dollars for research. It’ll hit the market within 10 years, sooner if the business case becomes stronger for me doing it or if I have the spare $20k to go out and get the relevant patent to see what doors that opens.
I expect the first consequence of widespread genetic testing for mental health is for NRIs to become much more widely prescribed as the firstline treatment for depression.
That depends on whether they decided to commit suicide while in a normal-for-them frame of mind, not on their current preference. The first part of the question implies that they didn’t, in which case the correct response is to rescue them, wait for them to get sober, and talk it out—and then they can commit suicide, if they still feel the need.
Very well, then. Next example. Your friend is depressed, and they want to commit suicide. You know that their real problem is a neurotransmitter imbalance that can be easily fixed. However, that same neurotransmitter imbalance is depriving them of any will to fix it, and in fact they refuse to cooperate. You know that if you fix their imbalance regardless, they will be happy, they will live a fulfilled life, and they will be grateful to you for it. Is it friendly to intervene and fix the imbalance, or is it friendly to let them die, seeing as depression and thoughts of suicide are a normal-for-them frame of mind?
It doesn’t follow that they prefer to commit suicide.
This is an excellent answer, and squares well with mine: If they merely want to commit suicide, they may not have considered all the alternatives. If they have considered all the achievable alternatives, and their preference is to commit suicide, I’d support them doing so.
If this is leading in a direction where “wireheading” is identified with “being happy and living a fulfilled life”, then we might as well head it off at the pass.
Being happy—being in a pleasurable state—isn’t enough, we would insist that our future lives should also be meaningful (which I would argue is part of “fulfilled”).
This isn’t merely a subjective attribute, as is “happy” which could be satisfied by permanently blissing out. It has objective consequences; you can tell “meaningful” from the outside. Meaningful arrangements of matter are improbable but lawful, structured but hard to predict, and so on.
“Being totally happy all the time” is a state of mind, the full description of which would compress very well, just as the description of zillions of molecules of gas can be compressed to a handful of parameters. “Meaningful” corresponds to states of mind with more structure and order.
If we are to be somehow “fixed” we would want the “fix” to preserve or restore the property we have now, of being the type of creature who can (and in fact do) choose for themselves.
The preference for “objective meaningfulness”—for states which do not compress very well—seems to me a fairly arbitrary (meaningless) preference. I don’t think it’s much different from paperclip maximization.
Who is to observe the “meaningful” states, if everyone is in a state where they are happy?
I am not even convinced that “happy and fulfilled” compresses easily. But if it did, what is the issue? Everyone will be so happy as to not mind the absence of complicated states.
I would go so far as to say that seeking complicated states is something we do right now because it is the most engaging substitute we have for being happy.
And not everyone does this. Most people prefer to empty their minds instead. It may even be that seeking complexity is a type of neurotic tendency.
Should the FAI be designed with a neurotic tendency?
I’m not so sure.
I can give you my general class of answers to this kind of problem: I will always attempt to the best of my ability to talk someone I care about out of doing something that will cause them to irretrievably cease to function as a person—a category which includes both suicide and wireheading. However, if in spite of my best persuasive efforts—which are likely to have a significant effect, if I’m actually friends with the person—they still want to go through with such a thing, I will support them in doing so.
The specific implementation of the first part in this case would be to try to talk them into trying the meds, with the (accurate) promise that I would be willing to help them suicide if they still wanted to do that after a certain number of months (dependent on how long the meds take to work).
There are so many different anti-depressants and the methods for choosing which ones are optimal basically come down to the intuition of the psychiatrist. It can take years to iterate through all the possible combinations of psychiatric medication if they keep failing to fix the neurotransmitter imbalance. I think anything short of 2 years is not long enough to conclude that a person’s brain is irreparably broken. It’s also a field that has a good chance of rapid development, such that a brain that seems irreparably broken today will certainly not always be unfixable.
--
I explored a business in psychiatric genetic testing, and identified about 20 different mutations that could help psychiatrists make treatment decisions, but it was infeasible to bring to market right now without having millions of dollars for research, and the business case is not strong enough for me to raise millions of dollars for research. It’ll hit the market within 10 years, sooner if the business case becomes stronger for me doing it or if I have the spare $20k to go out and get the relevant patent to see what doors that opens.
I expect the first consequence of widespread genetic testing for mental health is for NRIs to become much more widely prescribed as the firstline treatment for depression.